Passion Plays

My jaw still hurts after sitting through Francois Ford Coppola's epic MEGALOPOLIS. My mouth fell open about five minutes into the movie and didn't close until I (finally!) visited the restroom two and a half hours later. I haven't seen anything as audacious, baffling, sumptuous, intriguing or incoherent on a cinema screen in recent or even distant memory. While endlessly fascinating, it also doesn't make a lick of sense much of the time, so much so that Fellini himself would said, "Huh?'

A more accurate title for Coppola's modernized Roman epic could have been EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE if it wasn't already taken. I will fully cop to the fact that much of this film went over my head. Then again, I believe the same is true of Francis. He dove straight into the deep end and, even though he starts to drown, he keeps swimming anyway. He knew he was going to break the surface again, struggling the entire way, right up to the point of hallucinating as he runs out of air. And what does he do then? He plants those illusion straight onto the screen, somehow keeping the whole enterprise afloat. But did he have to pen his screenplay in the pool as well? MEGALOPOLIS is overflowing with the most indecipherable dialogue any actor has ever had to perform which occasionally ventures into Latin for reasons only FFC can answer. So many questionable character names as well, though I did have a favorite, Aubrey Plaza's Ego Platinum. 

The cast is game, going over the top from the git-go, not to an irritating effect for the most part, though Shia La Boeuf ventures closest to the edge. Interesting to see Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in the same film again, though it seemed a wasted opportunity that they didn't share a scene together. I have to give it up to Adam Driver for the Herculean effort he put into the lead role, running laps with his director in that drowning pool, unafraid of the consequences of his actions no matter how outrageous they might appear and oh, brother, did they ever. In some pretentious circles, this is considered bravery. "Oh, Adam's so brave for putting himself out there like that!" 

The true courage, if that's what it can be deemed, goes to Francis F. himself. The man is in his mid-80s and put everything on the line for this project that has been almost 50 years since its first inception. Raising over $120 million in this day and age for an independent production is a massive undertaking that someone half his age will find impossible. What he ended with may be a colossal mess, but to call it a failure is extremely short-sighted. For myself, this was a once in a lifetime viewing that I couldn't even begin to forget (with some exceptions, but let's get back to the platitudes). I may never sit through it again, but I actually cherished the experience. I was rooting for Francis the entire way, though I had some personal misgivings going in and almost didn't watch it.

As a rule, a passion project such as MEGALOPOLIS doesn't match up to the filmmaker's vision and often fall flat on their faces in abject failure. For example, look, if you can, for Barry Levinson's TOYS, Terry Gilliam's THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (hello again, Adam Driver), George Miller's THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING,  and Martin Scorsese's SILENCE (what, again Adam?) You can add Michael Cimino's HEAVEN GATE to take that to the broken bank, but one must really look at Orson Welles' THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. It took nearly 48 years to make before Netflix actually came to the rescue to help finish what Orson could not. WIND is as chaotic and captivating as MEGALOPOLIS. Time has a way of diminishing the initial fire of the filmmaker's imagination. For Orson Welles, it damn destroyed his last gasp once and for all. For Francis Coppola, the jury is still out, though in this age of snap judgments and rotten tomatoes muddying the artistic waters, he's been shown the curb by an unforgiving world, one he has skewed in the film in question.

More recently, Kevin Costner has stumbled out of the corral with his epic western saga HORIZON which has cost him a ton of dough, a TV series (YELLOWSTONE) and possibly a career. Costner is even more stubborn than Coppola, stubbornly splitting his film into four chapters, two of which have been completed. The critics have been brutal, the box office grim and HORIZON is already streaming less than three months after its debut. As for the fate of Chapter Two and subsequent installments, it's all on the roulette wheel for now. But Costner is no less driven and downright stubborn than his predecessors.

This all hits very close to home for this guy right here. I have been writing a novel for more years than I would care to admit, one I consider a passion project of my very own. I've recently completed a draft I can live with story-wise since in all that time, it has gotten away from me too. In no way am I comparing myself to anyone I've discussed, but I do understand how a long-gestating project can come apart at the seams. An unwelcome part of the task becomes trying to fix the damage done by waiting too fucking long. But in that time, I have been able to correct mistakes and, in some ways, made it even better. However, it isn't the same as I originally envisioned it. What was meant to be a springboard has become a life's work, unintentionally or not.  I am about enter an intensive editing phase because what I have now is way too much of what I fear may not be a good thing. In other words, an unruly overwhelming and ultimately mess.

That's my reason for nearly ditching Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS. His failure would have been too much to handle because I would have taken it to heart. His failure would have dictated my own. At this stage of the end game, this has become an irrational fear. I have threatened to shit-can my work so many times over the years, why not tank the whole enterprise and call it a day? I finally relented and saw MEGALOPOLIS as I should have in an actual cinema, an endurance test but with benefits. I came away with the belief that, regardless of the outcome, Francis Coppola didn't take no for an answer, least of all from himself. The same could be said for Kevin Costner and so many others. I stand in their corners because I get it. They may very well have created fiascos from which they may never recover, but they were theirs to make. In that way and perhaps that way alone, they succeeded, inspiring me to head for the finish line, tripping and wheezing the rest of the way.

Call it obsession. Call it foolhardy. Call it nonsensical.

Call it passion.